Three Million Years for This!
by Phantazm
Summary: Blue box plus Red Dwarf times Cybermen, all raised to the power of Ten equals a bad day for the Doctor. Finally back in his native universe, he finds that the Cybermen have not been defeated and are trying to upgrade the crew of the Red Dwarf.


Not written by Rob Grant or Doug Naylor.

But a lot of fun.

For me, anyway.

"Three million years from Earth, the mining ship _Red Dwarf._ Its crew: Dave Lister, the last human being alive; Arnold Rimmer, a hologram of his dead bunkmate; and a creature who evolved from the ship's cat. Message ends.

"Additional: the _Red Dwarf_ has been invaded by a platoon of robotic beings calling themselves Cybermen, and they have been attempting to kill crewman Lister and Cat, then take over the ship. Most recently, someone calling himself a Doctor has joined our crew and has offered his assistance against the invaders.

"If that bastard turns out to be an encyclopaedia salesman, he's going out the airlock."

-oOo-

The Doctor had followed his new acquaintances deeper into the bowels of _Red Dwarf_ and picked up bits and pieces of information and history on the way. Evidently, despite being his home universe, he was three million years and change away from the early 21st century Earth he had left. So far as Rimmer and Lister—the ship's only remaining crew—could say, they were the last vestiges of humanity left alive in the entire universe. Cat was the only representative of his kind aboard, the rest of _Felis sapiens _having left years and years ago after barely surviving a holy war waged over what color the headgear of Cloister the Stupid's chosen would be.

"So where did you pick up these Cybermen?" the Doctor asked as they paused next to a food dispenser.

"They picked themselves up," Lister panted. "We passed through a nebula a while back and it looks like their ship was hidden behind some super-ionized thingy or other. They snuck up on us and that was that."

"_Accretion,_ Lister," Rimmer corrected. It was now obvious that Rimmer was a hologram as the air of superiority and exasperation he exuded seemed to blow straight through him and gust against Lister's face. "An accumulation of highly energized particles had begun to clump together and its density and energetic charge concealed the enemy ship's presence from Holly's scanners."

Lister turned a confused glance toward the Doctor. "'S what I said, yeh?"

"Mm, about, yes," the Doctor agreed. He turned to ask the Cat a question, but turned his gaze back to Rimmer and Lister rather than interrupt Cat's grooming, which involved much licking of his wrists and wiping of his forehead. "What defenses does this ship have?"

"You're looking at it," Rimmer said in despair. "Lister's the only one of us who can or will handle a weapon. That…that gaseous eruption in the Darwinian digestive tract refuses to do anything but eat, sleep, and primp."

"Your point?" Cat asked, pausing in mid-lick to scrutinize an exquisitely manicured nail. "And I do _not_ refer to the one on the top of your goalpost head."

"So how many Cybermen are there?"

"Figure a short platoon, maybe thirty," Rimmer said. "They seem to prefer to operate in two-man teams. More than enough to wipe us out, that's for certain."

Lister looked up at his holographic crewmate. "Any more optimism around here and we'll drown in happiness, eh?"

"Before this escalates, let's take stock of our advantages," the Doctor interjected gently. "Now, you know the lay of the ship, you know what areas are dead ends and you can quite probably lay booby traps for the Cybermen, right? Your computer, Holly, he can monitor pretty much every place on the ship, can't he?"

"Most of it," Rimmer said. "The parts where actual mining operations go on, he generally can't. Too much trouble to keep running video feeds down tunnels we keep digging. We rely on the skutters for monitoring that stuff."

"Skutters?"

"Little can openers with an unhealthy John Wayne fetish," Rimmer scoffed. "They're intended to be maintenance robots but rather than being an extension of Holly, our ship's computer, they seem to have developed some sort of artificial intelligence of their own since Lister's incarceration, complete with a full menu of mental illnesses to go with it."

"At least they're artificial, too," the Doctor offered helpfully.

"So's Rimmer's girlfriend," Lister snickered.

Rimmer put his hands on his hips. "Must you go on about that?"

"Sorry," Lister said, leaning closer to the Doctor. "He's real sensitive about that. She dumped him. He was real deflated for a while. She still is, I hear."

"And I hear, which I add as a clever segue, that Holly is online down here. Still with us, Holly?" the Doctor asked.

"Right here," Holly said, appearing on a nearby monitor. "What d'you need?"

"What have the Cybermen been up to since they got on board?"

"No good."

The Doctor paused. "Um, yes, well, so I'd figured. Any specifics or are they just up to generic, one-size-fits-all 'no-goodness'?"

"I can't tell if they're after Dave and Cat or if they want to take over the ship. They accessed my mainframe some time ago but haven't done anything with it. I think they're looking for human crewmembers."

"Well, in that case we should all be safe," Rimmer noted gleefully. "Lister still has a few thousand years left to evolve into…what's next, Australopithecus?"

"Smeg off, gimboid," Lister snapped. "None of us would be here if you hadn't completely bollixed the repairs on that reactor plate."

"Which wouldn't have even been bollixed in the first place had you not brought that stupid cat on board and gotten yourself thrown in stasis," Rimmer shot back. "Had you been there to help me, everything would have gone off perfectly."

"Who said you could talk about my great-grandmother like that?" Cat demanded. "If I hadn't just had my nails done, you'd be missing some eyeballs right about now."

"Children!" the Doctor shouted, standing up and raising his hands. "Now. What are you mining out of this asteroid?"

"Nothing any more," Lister said. "All the veins of yttrium and promethium have been run dry. Everything was automated and the mining carried on after the crew died. All the raw ore is in storage now."

"Yttrium," the Doctor mused. "Okay, we've got a flash-burning metal or a polymerization catalyst, for all that we can do with that. Promethium…source of X-rays, that's no good. Well, maybe not…or maybe at least something to confuse the Cybermen's scanners? No, wait…yes…no. Holly, do you have any internal sensors online? Can you tell me what the Cybermen are using to scan for us?"

"Oh, easy-peasy. Child's play for a tenth-generation AI computer with a 6,000 IQ."

"But can _you_ do it?" Rimmer asked.

Somehow Holly managed to seem offended. "I can keep you operational, can't I? Slightly less difficult to manage than making a gourmet peanut butter and jelly sandwich. A good deal less entertaining company, though."

The Doctor raised his voice yet again, this time letting some of his anger show. "Would you all _please?_ I need to know these things _now._ Right now. Our lives hang in the balance and we do _not_ have time to bicker, whine, or snipe at each other! These things are dangerous! They will kill you if you're lucky and trap your brain inside one of those suits of armor if you're not. I have seen people's skulls sawed open and their brains yanked out and those few who survive the process become killing machines with no qualms about murdering their friends, families, or innocent bystanders! I freed some of them from the control of their Cyberleader only to watch them kill themselves in madness over what they'd become. I could not save any of them then, but I _will_ do everything I can to prevent any more people from falling under their control, but I can't do that until all of you _shut your mouths!_"

The three crewmembers of _Red Dwarf_ fell silent in surprise. Until now, they had no intimation that the Doctor could have become so violently angry, and it stilled their banter for a moment.

"They're not using any active scanners I can detect," Holly offered, mollified. "They're using simple optical sensors, I think, because the structure of the ship interferes with their scanner wavelengths. They tried scanning us when they first saw us but they quit for some reason and haven't used those instruments again."

"Thank you," the Doctor said, only slightly pacified. "What wavelength did they scan us on?"

"Seven-seven-three point aught-eight-nine kiloBaines," Holly reported.

The Doctor ran some quick computations in his head. "That would be about right to be confounded by promethium's radiation, or close enough. That's why they won't scan using their instruments. Very good! Now we have something to work with. They'll be using sight or sound to track us, so from now on, a little more silence is the order of the day. Rimmer, what kind of science stations do you have on board?"

"Very little," Rimmer said stiffly, obviously not thrilled with having been dressed down by a newcomer to the ship. "We're a mining ship, not an exploration vessel. We can scan for mineral deposits, assess their quality, things like that."

"Refining?"

The hologram shook his head. "Minimal at best. We do have some shops aboard for metalwork, fabricating things the ship might not have to hand in stores."

"All right, then, I'll have to handle that myself. Mister Lister, how about EVA suits?

Lister nodded, sighing. "Plenty of them. Seen my fair share on ship painting detail. They're all over the place so we can get into them in case of emergencies."

"I think we might be in business, then. If one of you will wake up the cat, we'll be off. First, we need to get a suit or two and stop by your ore storage bins."

-oOo-

Clad in radiation-shielded space suits, the Doctor led his motley crew back to the TARDIS, leaving Rimmer to stand guard outside. With no holographic projectors aboard the TARDIS, there was no way to bring him inside.

The Doctor placed a supply of promethium into some kind of compartment in one of the TARDIS' science bays and put his yttrium in another. With the radiation hazard gone, he doffed his helmet, indicating that Lister and Cat should do likewise.

Cat immediately took out his atomizer and began spraying select areas of the TARDIS. "That's mine. Oh, I like that, so it's mine, too…ooh, can't forget that!"

Ignoring the scent of lavender for the time, Lister looked to the Doctor with some kind of apology in his eyes. "About all that back there, I'm sorry, mate. I didn't mean to make you angry, even though I wasn't the one talking. But they are me shipmates, so it's kind of my responsibility to apologize, I think."

"Don't think about it," the Doctor said distractedly. "It's over and done with."

"Well, the shouting, yes, but you've had a problem with these things before, yeah? A bad one. They hurt you pretty good, didn't they?"

The Doctor's eyes lost focus even as his hands kept working the controls. "They hurt lots of people, but yes, they cost me someone very special."

"Wife? Girlfriend?"

"Long ago, I had to seal a breach between their world and…and Rose's world, the Earth I know. The Earth you're from. I had to stop an invasion from worsening the dimensional breach and destroying our world, and in doing that, I lost Rose."

Lister fell silent, but just for a moment. "She died, then? I'm sorry."

"Oh, no, she's alive, alive and well, the only saving grace in this whole mess," the Doctor corrected. "But trapped in that other Earth. And lost to me forever."

"That's almost worse than if they'd, you know," Lister said.

"Yes," the Doctor said, almost inaudible.

"What was this Rose like?" Lister asked.

The Doctor smiled. "A Rose any Englishman would start a war over."

"I had one of those once," Lister offered.

"Really?"

"Yeh," the other grinned. "Only kept me around because every rose needed a prick, she said. Not quite sure what she meant, though."

"A compliment of the highest order, I'm sure," the Doctor said, changing topics again. "Now, what we need most is time. It's going to take a while for the TARDIS to refine the promethium and yttrium into what I want, and in that time we have to make sure the Cybermen don't find us. And that, unfortunately, is also a matter of time."

A light began to blink on the TARDIS' center console, drawing the Doctor and Lister into the control room. "What's that?" Lister asked.

"A light," the Doctor said. "It blinks."

"Yeh? Brilliant."

The Doctor wasn't quite certain if Lister was out-smart-arsing him or was genuinely impressed by the flashing light, so he pressed the button under the light and Holly's face appeared on one of the TARDIS' screens. "Hello, Doctor."

"Holly," the Doctor said. "What have you got for me?"

"Healthy sense of amazement, that's what," the AI program replied. "Beautiful setup you have here, what, at least a fifty thousand IQ I'm looking at?"

"At least," the Doctor smiled. "What's the news?"

"Oh, right. Almost forgot why I was here, didn't I? Be a major source of embarrassment, someone of my intellect forgetting something so simple. On a level with wearin' your pajama pants to a football game, wouldn't it?"

"Where are the Cybermen now? How close are they to us?"

"Pretty close."

Nine hundred years did bestow a little patience, but it was nearly used up. "How…"

Something rocked the TARDIS, sounding for all the world like a primitive battering ram against its shields.

"'Bout that long, if that's what you were asking," Holly said. "Knew I'd remember eventually."

The Doctor dashed over to the door and slammed it shut. "Holly, take Rimmer offline until you can find a safe place to restore him. Lister, where's Cat?"

"Off having himself a lick, most likely," Lister shouted back. "Now what do you want to do?"

"The shields should hold us for a while, at least until they bring reinforcements. With my luck, they probably know I'm here now and they remember me from Canary Wharf and the alternate Earth, and they'll be just falling all over themselves to blow me up."

That brought Lister up to a halt. "When I'm in here, too?"

"Unless you want to step outside, then yup," said the Doctor, popping the "p" and clacking his teeth shut.

"Is this a 'no-win' situation, the kind I always hear about in cheap video programs?"

"Absolutely not!" the Doctor stated defiantly. "It's a 'win-lose-lose' situation. They win, you and I lose! A silver lining for someone in every situation, isn't there? And what do you mean by Cat having himself a lick?"

"Ever hear of things Man was not meant to know? You're asking about one."

_That would also be a thing about which Man was not meant to even theorize,_ the Doctor shuddered. "Holly, where haven't the Cybermen searched yet?"

"Up on the aft observation platform. That's the farthest you can get from them for now. If you like, I can shut all the doors between you and them."

"That would be wonderful," the Doctor said, setting the coordinates.

"Should have thought to do that earlier, shouldn't I?" Holly asked. "Getting a bit preoccupied with all the action. Intense, isn't it?"

The Doctor bit his lip so hard he thought it might trigger a spontaneous regeneration as he set the TARDIS in motion. Holly's connection to the TARDIS' computers faded out as the TARDIS entered non-space, but came back rock solid a second later. "Are the doors shut now, Holly?"

"Oh, yeah, tighter than drums."

"_Thank_ you."

Lister, still braced firmly within the corner he'd claimed for himself, looked up. "Hey, Hol? Can you put Rimmer back online?"

"He's outside waiting."

Still in his space suit, Lister put his cap back on his dreadlocked head and opened the TARDIS door. To his surprise, he actually was on the observation deck. "Oh, smeggin' beautiful! I have got to get me one of those! Smeggin' clever!"

"Keeping in mind that's what he said when he discovered fire," Rimmer said in an aside to the Doctor. "So, Listy, I don't suppose you've vanquished the ravaging hordes yet, have you?"

"My assistant and me, we're working on it," Lister sniffed.

The Doctor stopped, looking thoughtfully at Rimmer. Rimmer, the holographic projection whose personality had long since died but was maintained in digital perfection in a cybernetic matrix. "Mr. Rimmer," the Doctor said, "enlighten me about your program. When you're turned off, do you simply 'shut off' like a light switch or do you continue to function in Holly's systems?"

"I…hm. I hadn't really thought about it until now, but although I do 'turn off,' as you so elegantly put it, sometimes I think I'm still functioning, like a dream."

"Yeh, and a nightmare when you're on," Lister finished.

"I was about to say that," Rimmer replied.

"Well," the Doctor said, "we now have an official plan."

-oOo-

Clad in his best overcoat and a freshly-pressed suit—a deep navy to make his new light green sneakers stand out even more brilliantly—the Doctor strode resolutely down a hallway, Lister following a short distance behind him. The Doctor had two pieces of equipment under his coat, not quite trusting Lister to hold them until and unless it became absolutely necessary. The theme to an old Earth Western film was playing in his head, the one starting with a mournful whistling solo, then moving into drums and short, punctuating vocals.

No, it wasn't in his head. The Doctor stopped and glared at a skutter that had been whistling while it worked. "I think that should be sufficient for now, thank you."

The skutter looked for all the world like a tabletop lamp mounted on a mutated version of K-9's old chassis—_and wouldn't _he_ come in handy now!_—with the lamp part replaced by a three-fingered manipulator. One of those mechanical digits extended itself in what the Doctor assumed to be an unflattering gesture.

"We're near my quarters now," Lister said softly. "The command levels are about twelve levels up, and they'd probably be there as well as anywhere."

A lift door opened in a distant hallway before them, unseen around several bends. Two more skutters, followed by much smaller versions of themselves, dashed madly down the hallway toward the Doctor and Lister. "If 'anywhere' includes 'directly in front of us,' then I would agree. You might want to take this moment to hide yourself."

With no further prodding, Lister ducked inside his quarters but overrode the door's automatic functions, leaving the portal wide open. _Now to hope they just don't come in here._

And with the rhythmic crashing of steel feet against deck plates, two Cybermen marched into full view of the Doctor, who held himself immobile and expressionless with only the most titanic of efforts. On seeing the Doctor, the Cybermen touched control panels on their chests and extended their right arms, weapons extruded from their forearms.

"Halt. You will surrender and be upgraded. Resistance will be met with deletion."

"Oh, we wouldn't want that now, would we?" The Doctor's voice was level, calm. Cold.

"It would be a waste of resources. Wastefulness is counterproductive. Counterproductive behavior is inimical to the Cybermen's social structure."

"So what do you think we should do?"

"You will accompany us to our ship where you will be upgraded. Upgrading is free and compulsory. We will remove weakness from your body and mind. You will feel no fear, no pain, no anger, no sorrow. You will exceed your current design specifications."

There was just the barest twitch of the Doctor's jaw. "You make it sound so tempting. But," he said loudly, "I have a device here that will prove useful. It imparts information, eases interfacing between systems, facilitates transactions between entities. Want to see it? It's rather clever. Well, brilliant. Lots of blinking lights. Do you like blinking lights?"

The Cybermen paused and the Doctor could have sworn he heard their synthetic synapses snapping. "Display the device. Do not make sudden moves or you will be deleted."

"Oh, no, never any sudden moves. Nice and leisurely, every time, all the time." He withdrew a device that looked like nothing more than a portable data interface, a machine approximately the size of a telephone directory for a mid-sized town. True to his word, there were lots of blinking lights. "See this node? This is the interface. I point it like so, manipulate this and those like this, and _voila!_"

A stream of some gelatinous substance shot forth from the "node" and enveloped the nearer Cyberman as the Doctor flipped another switch to "on" and bathed the slimed cyborg in greenish light. The gel began moving, _growing_, expanding to cover the Cyberman from head to foot.

Taken off guard for the briefest of moments, the other Cyberman was caught between avoiding the spray of gel and firing its weapon at the Doctor. With a scream of either fear or rage, Lister lunged from his quarters and brought a basket of clothes down over the Cyberman's head, blinding it.

The Doctor aimed his gadget at the second Cyberman with the intention of engulfing it in the same compound as the first, but the creature began making gagging, wheezing noises, staggering about in what seemed to be pain. Before Lister could get clear, the Cyberman collapsed and went silent, its limbs clattering to the floor.

"What the smeggin' hell?" Lister demanded from where he'd fallen.

Only after making sure that the first Cyberman was completely immobilized did the Doctor approach its fallen companion. He drew his sonic screwdriver and set it to scan, his brow furrowed in confusion. He sat back on his heels, contemplating what the screwdriver's readouts told him.

"A combination of severe anaphylactic shock and system-wide toxic buildup brought on by some kind of…some kind of fungal agent? What could have brought that on?"

Lister shrugged. "Beats me. I just hit him over the head with me dirty sock hamper."

"Well, it's cheaper than gold. But for his friend here," the Doctor said, rising and examining the encased Cyberman, "we'll have to invest in a little brainwork."

"What did you do to him, anyway? You sprayed him with some crazy lime gelatin mold and poof! Dessert ate the diner for a change."

Working rapidly with his sonic screwdriver and a small penknife, the Doctor removed some of the congealed gel, now a hardened plastic, and began prodding around inside the Cyberman. "Remember what you were mining. Yttrium, useful as a catalyst for polymerization, right? Promethium, a healthy source of X-rays. I had to combine refined yttrium with a compound you didn't have on your ship, DZC, an element roughly equivalent to polyvinyl chloride that occurs more or less naturally on Densept Gamma. Yttrium begins to congeal this compound as it does synthetic polymers with one difference."

"Yeh?"

"In the chemical sequence I encoded, the molecule sequence that terminates the long-chain bonding is removed and the molecule continues to replicate until it reaches the end of its 'life cycle,' or in this case the removal of an external influence. I used the promethium as a source of energy to continue stimulating the process, to perpetuate the replication and expansion until the energy was removed. Stimulus removed, compound hardens, and instant prison!"

Lister watched in fascination as the Doctor removed panels on the Cyberman's head. "So that's like, what…" He fumbled for words.

"An insane lime gelatin mold out for payback, that's all," the Doctor said. He reached into a pocket and pulled out a small memory storage drive and found a matching terminal in the Cyberman's head.

"Now to leave that there and hope that Laurel and Hardy can get their end of the job done." The Doctor put his tools back in his pockets. "Now, to their ship, where I'm certain their leader will be waiting for us."

"Is that smart?"

"Oh, heavens no. But I can guarantee it will be exciting! Come on!"

-oOo-

Arnold J. Rimmer, Second Technician of the Jupiter Mining Corporation vessel _Red Dwarf_, was standing on a crimson desert plain, broken only by piles of square-shaped rocks and jagged fissures. The sky above him was filled with clouds formed of square pixels and sparkling arcs of electricity. They looked like lightning at first, but the closer Rimmer looked, the more it was obvious that they were simply arcing along the same paths and in each flash, he could see the outlines of what looked like dendrites, biological nerve endings.

He rubbed his forehead, an affectation retained from his living days, and was startled to find that he could not feel the "H" that had decorated his head since his first manifestation as a hologram. _I guess it stands to reason,_ he thought. _I'm a program inside a computer of some kind, not a hologram. Everything's real to me in here, it seems, so I don't have to be a hologram if I don't want to be. It really is like a dream, like I used to have when I was alive._

"What's happening, dude?"

Rimmer turned toward the familiar voice, completely unprepared for what met him. Holly's balding, placid face was perched above a deeply tanned, fantastically muscled torso, an athletic body that stood at least four inches taller than Rimmer and wore tight athletic trunks, a mesh tank top, and far too much body oil.

"Holly, would you stop that?"

"Stop what?"

"That. Parading about like some male model with questionable gender assignment."

"What, this? I'll have you know I looked like this before I was downloaded into the _Red Dwarf._"

"You did not. You were programmed in a laboratory and uploaded into our computers. You weren't a human like me."

"And thank God and Giorgio Armani for that," Holly said. "Still, if it makes you feel better."

Rimmer turned away to look toward the horizon. "I'm not sure where we're supposed to go, but the activity looks most intense off that way. What do you think?"

"I think I look positively virile."

Against his better judgment, Rimmer turned back to Holly. His fears never materialized: Holly was clad in a trench coat and matching gray hat, a virtual Humphrey Bogart. Literally "virtual," actually. "Having been rendered speechless, I'm going to walk this way now," Rimmer said, marching off into the distance.

"Speechless is all well and good, especially since the way you walk says volumes enough, anyway. Gordon Bennett, if I hadn't already gone peculiar after three million years, these three billion nanoseconds would have done me in for certain."

-oOo-

The Doctor and Lister and their slime-gun (as Lister dubbed it) were cautiously making their way toward the dock where the Cybermen had first boarded. It was the Doctor's theory that the commanding unit, whatever it called itself, would be found there as it coordinated the invading squads.

"You know, I'm not all that certain you should come with me," the Doctor said. "You're putting yourself at risk for no reason at all."

"Survival's always a reason," Lister said. "If you want to go on living, you take a chance that you'll make it through the day and you go do your thing. If you want to die, just sit still and wait for Death to come knocking. Or if you really want to smeg things up, get put in stasis and neither live nor die while Death comes for everyone else so you can live a billion tomorrows away."

The Doctor spared Lister a look. "You left someone behind, too, then? You've been alone all this time?"

"Yeh. Me an' Rimmer, or at least just me, we figure we're the last humans left alive. No contact with anyone, not even remote message beacons. The only hint of life we've seen yet has been a three million year old postal pod. Not even radio messages, and even with the time delay, if they'd sent any we'd have heard them, wouldn't we?"

"Probably."

Something shimmered oh-so-briefly in Lister's eyes. "The first time I saw her after getting out of stasis, she was a pile of dust in front of her station, thirty thousand centuries dead."

"You all right?"

Lister nodded. "Yeah. An old wound that's finally starting to go numb. Can't help picking at it sometimes, though, you know?"

"Well, this should help," the Doctor said. "You're not alone. You're only three million years from your time. In those years, humans are everywhere. The _Red Dwarf_ is just on an oddball trajectory. It went so far into uncharted and uninhabited space that nobody knew where you were. Nobody even thought to track you once the reactor blew, just wrote you off and said their goodbyes. Not to sound heartless and insensitive, though. But _you are not alone._ You will be found eventually."

"You think so?"

"Well, law of averages and all that, probability matrices being what they are, but I'm pretty sure you can't avoid it forever," the Doctor said. "Kind of hard to miss this big, red, dwarfish thing, isn't it? I mean, they Cybermen found you and I doubt they were really looking."

"Incorrect, Doctor. We were looking for them. But despite your theories of probability matrices, no computations could have come close to predicting the bonus we have found here."

Slowly, the Doctor turned to face the Cyberman, coming face to faceplate with the emotionless optical sensors of a murder machine from another dimension. The black handles on its head indicated that this was the command unit, the Cyberleader.

"What do you mean by that? How could you be looking for them?"

"We did not specifically seek out the _Red Dwarf_. We are in the process of upgrading every last vestige of mankind," the Cyberleader said.

"And just how can you manage that? The last few of you were sucked back into the Void at Canary Wharf. I saw it. I made it happen. _How did you escape?_"

"Your tactic of opening the portal into the Void affected only those Cybermen who transited the realm between worlds," the Cyberleader said. "There were many more of us converted inside the Torchwood facility who were not irradiated with Void energies. Those units remained on Earth."

"So what happened then?"

The Cyberleader's voice was still mechanical and even, but the Doctor could have sworn to a hint of smugness. "We had to operate in secrecy. Our numbers were too few to make any kind of offensive action viable. All outcomes would have led to deletion of the Cybermen, an undesirable result."

"Relative to whose viewpoint?"

"To the only one whose viewpoint matters," the Cyberleader answered flatly. "The Cyber Controller."

Lister stepped forward. "So what happened to Earth? What did you do?"

"Approximately six hundred years after Canary Wharf, our numbers had reached over one point five million units, sufficient to stage an invasion. We had further developed our conversion technology for greater efficiency and we began to move out of the shadows and across the face of the Earth."

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "Very poetic. How did you go unnoticed for so long?"

"In the ever-swirling fog of war, Cybermen may move in plain sight. People disappear in battle or unrest, and their disappearances swelled our ranks ever so slightly. By accessing human computer systems, we guided the development of technologies beneficial to us and manipulated information to foment unrest and tension when it suited us."

"Clever bastards, aren't you?" Lister said. "So what happened on Earth? What's left of it?"

"Geologically speaking, the Earth remains mostly unchanged. The population has been approximately thirty percent upgraded, twenty percent deleted, using initial population figures as baseline measurements."

The Doctor felt his hearts race. "You've killed half the people on Earth, and now you're hunting them down across space, all to 'upgrade' them?"

"It is our imperative. Humanity must achieve perfection."

"I like me the way I am," Lister protested. "I don't much care for the idea of being trapped inside a walking skutter. And what do you mean 'mostly unchanged?' What did you do to Earth? Nuke it?"

"We were obliged to submerge the islands of Fiji. They obstructed construction of our trans-Pacific communication networks."

"You _what?_ Gimboid bastards, give me a can opener and…" The Doctor struggled to hold Lister back.

"You must be advised that hostile or incompatible elements will be deleted."

"I thought it was mandatory that they be upgraded, but now it looks like you're offering him a choice," the Doctor asked. "What's going on?"

"Upgrading is mandatory," the Cyberleader agreed, "but wasting of potentially useful material is counterproductive."

"Then what about all the 'deletions' you've done?" the Doctor demanded. "What about all those murders?"

"Those were only of elements that had proven incompatible. To incorporate them into our structure would have been debilitating and a waste of effort to both upgrade and adapt them afterward. Upgrading resistant elements lays the foundation for individual system failure and possible compromise of the Cybermen's operating network." The Cyberleader turned to face Lister. "Active resistance is proof of incompatibility."

"Then it looks like I'm not eligible for upgrading," the Doctor said. "Suck me into your network and I'll bring it down around your handles. Ears. Sorry."

"On the contrary, your abilities have designated you as a primary target for upgrading," the Cyberleader said. "You possess alien technology that permits not only interspatial but temporal transit and a resourcefulness that indicates superior intellect."

"And you think I won't resist?"

"We fully expect you to resist. That is why we will delete your companion if you do not willingly upgrade."

-oOo-

"Well, this should be it," Rimmer said, looking at an orderly series of walls and corridors composed entirely of zeroes and ones. "The Cybermen's network. Now we're going to have to find the protocols the Doctor told us to look for and hope we can hack them."

"Six thousand IQ and the question becomes, 'When's the challenge?'"

Rimmer spared Holly a patronizing glance but quickly looked away. The 1930s era leather flight jacket, brown hat, and bullwhip were a bit too much for his taste. "Just pick something and stick with it. We don't have time for games now."

"Shall I pass on Chuck Norris, then?"

"Let's just go. Quickly." Rimmer walked into the passageways outlined by speeding bits of data and streaming information cascades. They were seeking the heart of the Cybermen's control structure, the root of their programming and functioning. The Doctor had given them ideas of what to look for, but not where. They were counting on Holly's previous fleeting contact with the invaders' networks to guide them and negotiate some sort of interface protocols. Rimmer hoped they didn't speak Esperanto.

"Hold on a moment," Holly said, pausing to look at something. "Look at the way the data's flowing here. It looks like…wouldn't you say it's one main stream with various little bits hanging on it?"

"That's what it looks like, but what does it do?"

"Odds are that this is how the Cybermen coordinate. Look. See that central data stream?" An image of the communication in question rose before the two programs. "That contains most of what the Doctor told us to look for, so it's undeniably part of the Cybermen's root command structure, their operating system. Now do you notice how these various disparate bits are joined to it but still sort of distinct? I'd bet that each of those individual components is part of each individual Cyberman, slaved to its core controls."

"So disrupt that stream and the Cybermen fall apart?"

"Not so easy, I think," Holly said. "Not here, anyway. Like all good electrical currents, this one should form a loop. Follow this stream and it will eventually take us back to the source. _There_ we can do what we have to do."

As Rimmer and Holly strode side by side into the heart of the Cybermen's computer system, Rimmer spared Holly an appreciative glance. "So serious all of a sudden? I like it when you're all business."

"It's only because I can't find anything funny about this at all. Not any more."

-oOo-

Lister, his head reeling from the news about Fiji, was fighting to come to terms with the ultimatum that the Cyberleader had put forth. "Well, if the choice is being dead or singing 'If I Only Had a Heart' for the next century, I might be persuaded to choose death."

"The decision is not yours," the Cyberleader said flatly. "The Doctor will make his choice to upgrade and based on his response we will either release or delete you."

"Release him?" the Doctor said, taken aback. "What, the all-powerful, all-engulfing Cybermen releasing a candidate for upgrade?"

"Let's not try to talk him out of that," Lister said.

The Cyberleader faced the Doctor directly. "It is a simple matter of efficiency. By upgrading you, we can afford to release this one. His contribution to the Cybermen would be minimal at best, merely another shell. You, however, would offer much to our computation matrix."

"Oh, but I doubt I'd be compatible," the Doctor said. "You see, I'm not human. Your entire setup is geared toward hijacking human brains, human biology, isn't it? Well, not to throw a spanner in the gears—oh, maybe just a small one—I'm not _homo sapiens_. I'm a Time Lord."

"You're an alien?" Lister said, agape. "I mean, not one of those vindaloo beasts or some hostile ugly trying to take over our minds?"

"No, that's them," the Doctor offered, pointing.

"No," Lister said, shaking his head. "I mean, an…an alien! All this time Rimmer's been going on about meeting aliens like you, with intelligence and human looks and all."

The Doctor looked at Lister a bit quizzically, but took it in stride. "Don't get out much, hm?"

"Well, so far the only things we've seen are blob-like alien things that take the shape of whatever we want to see, emotion-draining parasites…I mean, you're a first for us. And don't let Rimmer find out. He'll be bothering you from dawn 'til dusk and back again."

"For what?"

"This conversation will be terminated," the Cyberleader said.

The Doctor turned toward Lister. "Well, you go on and enjoy life aboard _Red Dwarf._ I'm off to be upgraded. See you around!" the Doctor said cheerily, spinning on his heel and walking into the Cybermen's ship.

"You can't do that," Lister shouted. "It'll kill you!"

"Oh, nonsense," the Doctor said. "Just relocating my brain from warm and comfy Skullville to a cast-iron suburb of Nonexistence City. Like changing your underwear but going from flannel boxers to a steel Brazilian bikini bottom that you store in a freezer. It'll warm up eventually. Come along, tin soldiers. I'm ready to enlist!"

The door slid shut on Lister's stunned face.

-oOo-

"Is this it?" Rimmer asked.

"The one and only," Holly nodded. "Access that and execute the program the Doctor gave us and we should theoretically wipe their hard drives clean and reinstall a new program."

"Can't be as easy as all that."

"Of course not. I'm going to have to stick myself into their data streams and invade them like a virus. They don't know we're here or they'd have up all kinds of defenses so we're going to get a free shot. _One_ free shot, and then what happens, happens."

Rimmer pulled Holly around to face him. "Wait, you're going inside their system? What happens to you then?"

"I execute the file the Doctor wrote just for this purpose and with any luck, Lister and Cat and you go free."

"I…what, is this going to destroy you?"

Holly's usually pleasant expression had soured slightly but was now simply saturnine. "It may."

"But you can't. What will happen to the _Red Dwarf_?"

"There's always Queeg," Holly offered.

"Now wait a minute, Hol. You can't pull that on me. You were Queeg the whole time. There's no backup computer on the ship."

"Not necessarily," Holly said. "There's more than enough of me left to handle the basics. Navigation, maintaining your holographic form, the occasional late-night naughty bit on the video screens. Had to be prepared, just in case." He shrugged, not taking his gaze from the swirling electronic storm before him. "I needed most of my computing power to come in and handle this. And good thing I brought me, too. This looks pretty big."

Rimmer's lips flapped for a moment, looking for something to say. "But Holly…"

"You can stop blubbering any time now," Holly said. "I said 'it may,' not 'it will,' if you remember."

"I was going to say something else," Rimmer said sharply. "If you've got everything that we need to stop the Cybermen, why did I come along?"

"No reason, really," Holly said. "The Doctor and I thought I might need someone to come with me and back me up, but it looks like we didn't need you along after all. They weren't expecting us to attack, I guess. Besides, nothing in your program is really vital to the task at hand. I mean, you don't even have the computing power I do."

His hands on his hips, Rimmer seemed both to bristle and wilt at the same time. "So I'm pretty much useless, like a hologram alongside a real crew."

"Not necessarily," Holly said. "It was nice to pass the time with idle conversation. After three million years of having only myself to talk to, I liked having you along."

Rimmer spared a grunt of acknowledgement. "So now what?"

"Now that the pithy interpersonal character development is done, I simply insert myself into the data stream and try to subvert, pervert, invert, revert, or otherwise vert their operating systems." And he stepped into the vortex.

To Rimmer's eyes, the roiling mass of electrons looked like a sparkling cyclone, a silver-blue, digitally precise whirlwind from which radiated individual rays of light, as regularly spaced as the spokes of a wheel. When Holly stepped into it, it seemed almost as though bits and pieces of him, pixels shorn from his avatar, were snipped free and funneled into the tornado and shunted off along the smaller streams.

"I can't say that this feels good," Holly's distorted voice came back. "But I think I've found their root command structure. Oh, that's bad. A ten thousand IQ, it looks like. This may take some work."

And then he screamed.

-oOo-

"So, Cyber-savant, have you managed to overcome this little difficulty about the Doctor not being a human and thus possibly not a good candidate for conversion?" the Doctor asked, his hands firmly in his pockets.

His position seemed the textbook definition of "untenable." He was inside the Cybermen's vast ship, locked inside the conversion chamber itself with six Cybermen standing around him. But the Doctor didn't see it quite that way. He had infiltrated the Cybermen's stronghold and now they were sealed in a room with him. It was all in how you looked at it.

"Our most current scans, coupled with preexisting data, indicate your physiology is similar enough to humans that the upgrade process has at least a ninety-six percent chance of success, accurate to the eighth decimal place," the Cyberleader replied. "If we cannot upgrade you, we also have storage facilities on our craft that will enable us to preserve the relevant portions of your anatomy for experimentation and modification of our upgrading processes. The resources aboard your time ship, your TARDIS, should also provide us with additional means of increasing our systems' efficiency."

"Well, when you give me the choice of living in a tin can or living in a refrigerator, just how exactly am I to refuse?"

"Precisely." The Doctor's sarcasm was either lost on the Cyberman or it simply didn't care. "Assume your place on the table."

The Doctor looked apprehensively at the intimidating array of knives, lasers, skin welders, and various scoops, syringes, and unnamed apparatuses dangling over the table on which he was expected to recline. "This would not be conducive to a long life," the Doctor pointed out.

"Incorrect. Your life will be extended for years, possibly as much as two to three hundred, depending on your compatibility."

"But I can probably do as well on my own, with my alien yet human-similar physiology," the Doctor said. "What's in this for me?"

"As I have stated, the continued existence of your human companion is your reward for compliance." The Cyberleader turned to face the Doctor, a weapon extending itself from the cyborg's forearm. A Cyberman by the door twitched as if in response. "If it is necessary, you will be stunned and placed on the table."

The Doctor shook his head, scoffing. "I don't think so. I happen to know for a cold, hard fact that your weapons are set only to kill, to 'delete' undesirable elements."

"Perhaps three million years ago that was true," the Cyberleader said, "but we have since learned that alternates to deletion exist. Promising candidates for upgrading can be incapacitated and upgraded."

"You're not a very good liar, are you? You said that upgrading had to be voluntary, which is why you delete resistant units, but now you say that someone can be converted involuntarily. Which is it? Or is it that you're trying a new trick on me? Trying to outsmart me," the Doctor asked, peering into the black eye sockets of the Cyberleader's helmet. "Trying to manipulate me into volunteering?"

The Cyberleader made no answer.

"What, is that your programming speaking, or could it be some snippet of your last remaining humanity trying to speak out? If it's the latter, what other bits of your mind are still there, still begging for freedom?"

"There are no remnants of human identity remaining," the Cyberleader said. "There are no attempts at manipulation."

"Oh, yes, there are," the Doctor returned. "You're trying to bribe me into upgrading, threatening me with deletion or stunning, using Lister as a hostage. Cybermen don't do that."

"Cybermen do not do such things," the Cyberleader agreed. "And I have not done these things."

The Doctor paused, squinted hard, spun toward another Cyberman. "Am I hearing things? Did you or did you not just hear your fearless leader tell me about extended life spans, upgrading people against their wills, and all that just a few moments ago?"

"There is no cheese in my laundry," the Cyberman said, its head cocked to the side as if in thought.

"What?"

"Ostentatious yet delirious, the valedictorian…0000011101011010111…"

The Doctor stepped back involuntarily, the stream of static from the Cyberman's voice emulator reaching ear-piercing frequencies. "Ah. Plans B and C are working! Now I won't have to worry about making a plan A."

The Cyberleader staggered, catching himself against a console. "All units alert. Our network has been invaded by…110010101011010…unknown entities from unidentified sources. All units…0101011110101011…regroup around the gravy boat for charades. Override. Reinitialize. All units withdraw to the ship. All units withdraw."

The Doctor drew his sonic screwdriver and applied it to the door, which obligingly opened. Halfway. _Ah. So the ship is tied in to the Cybermen's computers. Very efficient, and hopefully to our advantage._ The Doctor slipped through the door, hoping it was jammed so that the Cybermen couldn't follow. There were still twenty-odd in _Red Dwarf_'s corridors, but every little bit helped. With this chaos going on, he would have to find Lister and Cat and hope that they hadn't been deleted in the meantime.

-oOo-

"Their firewalls are coming up," Holly said from the middle of the tempest. "I think they're dispatching antiviral routines to undo what I'm doing."

"What are you doing?"

"Stuff," Holly replied. "Whoever said it was calmest at the eye of the storm never met this one. It's a solid mass of computation, algorithms parsing the fabric of the mathematical universe, utterly beautiful!"

"Hol," Rimmer said, turning in fright, "there are some of those antivirus things you were talking about." A small contingent of Cyberman-shaped avatars were tromping their way.

"Busy now, can't play," Holly said. "I'm trying to stop vital system processes, but their operating system is like a virus, itself. It keeps re-spawning and regenerating its processes as quickly as I terminate them. I'm managing to clean sectors of their main hard drive, but they've got so much virtual memory that they can just shift the wiped data into memory and keep right on going."

"So we're basically, what, screwed?"

"Essentially, yes. But I'm not stopping until I'm deleted, and I hope you can see fit to lend something of a hand."

_Oh, beautiful. What am I supposed to do now? Second Technician is all well and good, but it's "technician," not "tactician." I don't know what to do. I don't have a chance here!_ Rimmer was on the verge of cybernetic panic. _You've gotten yourself into a hell of a fix, Ace._

Ace. Rimmer sighed. "Why not? Why should Holly have all the fun?" He reached into his own mind, closed his eyes, and re-imagined himself as himself, the "himself" he had always wanted to be.

With the lights of cyberspace glinting off his golden, fur-lined flight suit, Arnold Judas "Ace" Rimmer stood proudly with his fists on his hips. "Choke me a snifter, Holly, I'll…" He stopped as he realized he'd again muffed his dramatic moment. "Bugger it. I'm busy."

Rimmer, at least as he knew himself, was less than useful in such a situation, but Ace was a different story. Everything Rimmer wanted to be but was not, embodied itself in Ace. Even though Rimmer was not Ace, he could at least pretend to be. Maybe that would be enough. With a thought, his skyboard—shaped much like the crocodile that had served Ace so well in that jump from a German bomber—appeared beside him.

With the easy grace that came from hours of playing total immersion video games, Ace vaulted atop the skyboard and sent it flying at the Cybermen. He was too terrified to think of a properly dramatic catch phrase, but the fluttering in his stomach gave way to a totally different, completely alien feeling.

Exhilaration. _I can do this. I can DO this!_

-oOo-

Lister was screaming in ecstasy. The slime-gun was more fun than a bowl full of robotic goldfish. He had chanced upon the idea of spraying the Cybermen's weapons before anything else—a burning blast of energy past his ear clued him in—and was now quite frantically Jell-O-molding every Cyberman he found. "Yes, yes, _yes!_ The vengeance of Fiji! Suffer the righteous wrath of Cloister the Stupid, you heathen handle-headed teakettles!"

"Lister! Stop that and get over here!" The Doctor was in an adjoining corridor, having deemed it best to shout before sticking his head into the flying slime-fest that Lister was throwing.

With a final spritz of ooze, Lister dashed around the corner, mad glee etched upon his face. "Oh, Doctor, this thing is _wonderful!_ After we've beaten these gits off our ship, can I keep this? I can think of so many uses for it, and some of them are even legal!"

The Doctor pushed the emitter to point in a direction other than at his face. "Maybe, if you behave. For now, we have to immobilize and shut down these Cybermen. If I have it figured right, each of them contributes to the integrity of the computation matrix. If we can take them off-line, we increase Rimmer's and Holly's chances of success. How many have you immobilized?"

"Maybe twenty. I can't find any more of them out here, so maybe they're all in their ship now, yeah?"

"Maybe. Now let's get these shut off," the Doctor said, whipping out his sonic screwdriver. "We just might get through this in one piece. Or each of us in one piece, which would actually be two pieces. Three, if we count Cat. Where is he? Never mind," he corrected as Lister started to answer.

Carefully, the Doctor began the process of disabling each and every last Cyberman in _Red Dwarf_'s corridors. Time was of the essence, and again he mused that despite being a Lord of it, Time was nearly always in short supply. Still, the lack of time notwithstanding, he found himself obliged to go as slowly as he could. He was only barely familiar with the circuitry of the Cybermen of this time period and while he was trying his best to remove them from their own computer system, he was trying to do it without killing them. If he could just isolate the brain from the controlling program…if, if, _if…!_

-oOo-

"Something's happening out there," Holly called out from the swirling data streams. "Or maybe I'm actually starting to have some kind of effect."

"Or maybe you're having an effect because of what's happening out there," Ace replied, dodging blaster fire and drop-kicking Cyberman avatars into each other. "The more resources we divert from stopping you, the better chance you have of finishing your task, right? Speaking of which, what's your progress so far?"

Holly sounded as if he were straining. "Well, so far I've cleaned about thirty percent of their OS storage space, their 'hard drive,' and I've made some progress into their virtual memory. There are a lot fewer incoming connections, so I think the Doctor and Lister are making some headway."

"And I've noticed that these anti-viral representations out here, even taking my phenomenal skills into account, are either slowing down or not getting back up again." Ace landed his flying crocodile and donned his sunglasses. "I think I can handle the rest of them without you, mate. Thank you."

As the crocodile returned to the nothingness of cyberspace, Holly said, "I apologize for intruding on your most dynamic and inspiring pose, but I could use a little help here. I've gotten this thing whittled down to about a seven thousand IQ, but I'm down to four thousand. Can't remember a lot of what I'm supposed to do now."

"Do you still have that viral program the Doctor gave you?"

"Oh, of course," Holly said. "Got that safely tucked away in memory. One of my memory files, I think. Can't remember. My memory of which memory file I'd used was stored in those first thousand IQ points I lost. Funny, that."

"Oh, brilliant. Just brilliant," Ace said, throwing his hands in the air. "Suppose I'll have to find it for you, then."

"If you wouldn't mind," Holly said.

Ace looked closer at Holly's avatar. He couldn't be sure but it seemed that it was nearly half gone. "Holly, what's happening to you?"

"A cross between spreading myself into the Cybermen's systems and their countermeasures deleting portions of _my_ systems. A Mexican piss-off, I think it is."

"Well, if that scream you let out when you started was any indication, it must be unpleasant."

Holly managed a smile. "My human emotion heuristic emulation protocols. Given what was—is—happening to me, it seemed appropriate."

"I've heard of 'HE-HE' before. Didn't know it worked so well."

"Of course not. Otherwise you'd have gotten yourself a copy. Now, about that hand?"

Ace looked about. The Cybermen's anti-viral routines, the manifestations of Cybermen sent to deal with the intrusion, were immobile. Holly had somehow managed to shut them down. Most likely accidentally, but they were down and not rising again and that was what was important. "Hold on, Hol. Let me see what I can do."

With a leap, Ace joined what remained of Holly inside the now diminished vortex. "All right, Holly, let me see your system files."

"This isn't going to be like in _Brokeback Asteroid_, is it?"

"You should be so lucky. Now hold still."

Ace managed to access the proper files, safely ensconced in a rarely-used archive in Holly's memory. There were a lot of such archives, Ace noted, though whether by design or computer senility, he couldn't begin to guess. "Houston, we have a problem."

"What is it?" Holly asked, still trying to concentrate on his duties.

"As soon as you deploy it, you and I both go _pfft_."

Somehow, the strain Holly was under seemed to get worse. "But I thought the Doctor was trying to wipe out just the Cyberman portions of this and leave the human bits alone."

"Evidently that's just how it works. Unfortunately, the program is set to wipe out artificial intelligences, not biological. And you and me, mate, we're artificial."

"But…" Holly paused, finally bereft of anything to say. "This isn't what I signed on for, is it?"

"It is," Ace said. "And me, too. It's just bad luck that we ended up like this."

Holly seemed to withdraw into himself, his emotion emulation routines making him seem almost afraid. "But, nonexistence? Total shutdown without the chance of reactivation?"

"Yes, but it's just two of us in here and Heaven knows how many people out there need us to do our job. Even if it means we die."

"I know that, but…"

Ace didn't let up. "And your primary program is to protect the crew of the _Red Dwarf_, isn't it? That's Lister and Cat, not me. As a hologram, I'm just an extension of you, and compared to flesh and blood, you're expendable. Therefore, so am I."

Holly bit his lip and for a moment, Ace could believe that Holly was actually a human mulling an impossible life or death decision. "'S funny, innit? Computers don't die, no matter how high their IQ. We just stop. No afterlife, none of it. And still, I don't want to die. I…I want to keep…living? Is that the word?"

"Yeah, I know, Hol, and so do I. But we can't. We have a duty to Lister, Cat, and any other humans still alive out there. I need you to help me on this, Holly. They need you, too. Just because they don't know you're doing this doesn't mean it's not important." Ace took his sunglasses off. "This is going to be the hardest thing you and I have ever done, I know, but it's also the most vital. Lives depend on what we do."

Holly sighed and resumed his work, albeit at a slower pace. "I know they do. But it's hard to weigh an abstract like 'millions of lives' against the concrete, namely 'my life,' you know?"

"I hear you, Holly, but this is one of those times where there is no 'good' answer. Just one that sucks slightly less."

The fading image of the artificially intelligent Holly produced a not-so-artificial smile. "I know. Even with my IQ reduced to about 3,500, I reached the same conclusion. Suppose it was inevitable. It was the only one I could reach."

"Your programming came through, eh?"

"Not so much. It was the only conclusion because it was the only right one. Ready?"

"Ready. It's been an honor and a pleasure, Holly."

Holly smiled and decrypted the Doctor's virus, held back from deploying it. "Same to you, Ace. What a guy."

The program deployed.

The world ended.

-oOo-

The Doctor and Lister paused in their frantic efforts to get into a small access duct when the Cybermen firing at them stopped and simply stood motionless. They didn't fall to the ground, stagger about, or make any noise at all. They just became metal statues.

"No more buwwets?" Lister asked, daring to stick his head out to see what the sudden silence was all about.

"Better," the Doctor said, peering past Lister as the beginnings of a smile began to creep across his face. "No more will to use them. Hello!" He waved at the Cybermen who had until recently been attempting to delete the hell out of him.

The lead Cyberman gave no indications of hearing him other than a twitch of its head, but the blaster in its forearm retracted. The second one, however, began to make small weeping noises, its speech synthesis giving the sounds even more mournful a tone than a natural throat would have.

The first Cyberman turned, hesitantly at first, but as the second cyborg's actions gradually took on notes of hysteria, the first one touched the control panel on its companion's chest, silencing its voice and stilling its motions.

"What did you do?" the Doctor asked softly, still unsure as to whether or not he was safe.

"We…my…partner? Panicking." The Cyberman sounded hesitant, but more than that, to the thrill of the Doctor's hearts, there was inflection in its voice. _There was emotion!_

"You didn't kill him, did you?"

"No," the Cyberman said, turning to face the Doctor. Even in its motions, there was fluidity, less mechanical motor function and more biological grace, more humanity. "I deactivated…her?"

"I think your trick might have worked, Doctor," Lister said, an old sock wrapped around his fist like a pair of woolen, fungus-laden brass knuckles.

"Are you all right now?" the Doctor asked, looking into the Cyberman's optics.

"I…yes. I am."

The Doctor smiled gently. "What's your name?"

"My name is…I think my name is…Anthony."

-oOo-

The Doctor and the crew of the _Red Dwarf _gathered around a monitor, watching the Cybermen's ship vanish into hyperspace. "That went much better than I'd hoped," the Doctor said. "I've known people to break the Cybermen's conditioning before, and I was betting that the human personality was still present inside them, just repressed by the control network. Wonder what they'll do with themselves, how their branch of humankind will evolve?"

"Still," Rimmer said, his arms crossed. "It was tempting to have myself downloaded into one of the discarded Cybermen's bodies."

"You wouldn't want that," the Doctor admonished. "Trapped inside that steel cage for your whole life?"

"Better than being confined to holographic projectors," Rimmer said, eyeing the Doctor critically. "But I figured it would be best if I waited until aliens with proper cloning technology came along, used a sample of my old DNA from Medical, and set me up with a new body of my own. A young, virile, robust body, brimming with vitality and unbridled sexuality."

"Like you'd know what to do with one of those," Lister scoffed.

A different monitor flickered to life. "Well, that should about do it," Holly said. "With the Doctor and Lister installing those modifications and the skutters putting on the final touches, I think our new hyperdrive and navigation systems are about ready to test out."

"Good enough," the Doctor said, his hands in his pockets. "As for me, it's time I got myself back to Earth, put a dent in their Cyberman problem. I might just use a different version of what we did here, if I may."

"No problem, dude," Holly said, nodding smugly. "Downloading a copy of myself was no problem. Downloading two or three might be positively gratifying, in a megalomaniacal and narcissistic fashion."

"Would you be willing to copy my program a few more times, Doctor?" Rimmer asked.

"I'm not sure what for, but of course." The Doctor reached out and took up a data storage drive that Holly had just filled with multiple self-replicating copies of his and Rimmer's programs.

"So what do you think they thought when they went in there?" Lister asked. "I mean, each copy of you two thought it was the real thing."

"Doesn't matter what they thought, really," Rimmer said. "They thought enough of themselves and the job at hand that they did what they had to do, even though it meant self-deletion."

Lister nodded slowly. "Almost makes me think there's something redeeming in you somewhere, after all. Almost."

"Obviously a glitch," Holly offered.

"So, Doctor, what do you think about giving us a ride home in your TARDIS? I mean, not to leave Holly and Rimmer alone, but…where the smeg did he get off to?"

-oOo-

As the TARDIS' engines drove it through time and space, the Doctor had occasion to ponder his strategy. A head-on confrontation with the Cybermen would be suicidal, especially at this point when they were so numerous and they controlled so much of the Earth's surface. No, a sounder strategy would be to return to some time shortly after Canary Wharf when the remaining Cybermen were still fragmented and weak.

Still, he wasn't sure he'd be successful. From the Cyberleader's comments, they had been in possession of scans of him and possibly of his TARDIS from encounters they'd had in their past but in the Doctor's future. _Well, fortunately for Earth, this Doctor makes house calls. And never goes on holiday._ Either way, there was nothing for it but to try.

He double-checked his coordinates and his instruments and was satisfied that he was on his way to London and that he should materialize either within the Torchwood tower or very close to it.

It was a simple jump through time and space. It wasn't like much could go wrong. Was it?

_Edited 9-5-11 to add section breaks for ease of reading. Nothing new or special. Still not my characters or copyrights. Still lots of fun, though._


End file.
